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'My Mother's Memories of Ampthill' --- First printed February 1998 as 'My Young Memories of Ampthill' by Amy Sharpe but this revised and amended edition by Mary Smith printed August 2005

August 2005

The published memoirs of Amy Winifred Sharpe, resident of Ampthill, born 1899 in a mid-terraced cottage in Oliver Street & died aged 98 in 1997. Daughter of a bricklayer she moved to Ashburnham road off Dunstable Street, into one of a number of homes her father had built. She attended Ampthill Methodist School on the Sands in Woburn Street (as did at least three generations of her family until it was shut around the 1960s) which she enjoyed until age 12 when she had to leave. She remember the journey to school calling on her friend from Austin Lane, and of the fear of arriving late as well as her uniform. She makes mention of the domestic work of her mother including washing and the thrifty ways in which they would make her fathers wages stretch across her family of 7. Memories of attending Ampthill Baptist Chapel on Sundays with family as well as Sunday School and the once a year picnics. She mentions several local businesses and stores which she remembers using as well as describing the changed which they have since underwent, these include the undertakers, a dressmakers both along Church Street as well as the adjoining grocery and hardware store owned by Mr Bates and Mr Parmiter respectively, which she remembers stocking almost anything you could think of. She fondly recalls the haberdashery store, Rushbrookes as well as the furniture shop in Bedford Street also owned by the same gentleman. The Kings Arms, the Doctors Surgery, Court House, Chemist, Crown and Sceptre pub, and Kings Head pub, (later a Drill Hall where she attended dances during WW1) Fire station, town pump and many of the other Establishments situated within Ampthill at this time, both small and large, also receive a mention as she shares all her memorials of life within the town. A few years after leaving school she worked first in Ampthill and later Luton in the hat making industry and remembers her time there fondly, before the outbreak of WW1 saw her and her friends working in a munitions factories in Luton, a job which she also enjoyed, as well as remembering fondly the excitement she felt at the time in the war time atmosphere, (despite the death of her brother in 1917) & eventually marrying a solider she met whist he was home on leave. Following the war, where she mentions that little had changed in Ampthill she returned to Luton for a while, until going to live in Bedford with her new husband, until finally returning home to Ampthill where she stayed since, raising her family in the town.

item

Sharpe, Amy,
Smith, Mary

AMPTHILL, autobiography, AMPTHILL, Ampthill Oliver Street, Ampthill Dunstable Street, Ampthill Woburn Street, Ampthill early education, Ampthill Church Street, Rushbrook & Company, Ampthill Bedford Street, Ampthill Market Place, furniture shops, butchers, trade & industry chemists, dairy goods trade, electrical goods shops, grocers, LUTON, hatmaker, munitions production, First World War, BEDFORD